


Perpetual Summer

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 03:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7297057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 2 era Christina Rose Scofield fic. (I still prefer the ghost-saint mother as opposed to the terrible cliche we got.) This is just five glimpses of some summertime stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perpetual Summer

_ Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; _

_ to me those have always been the two most _

_ beautiful words in the English language. _   
~ **Henry James**

 

I.

The summer Lincoln was two years old, Al and I took him to Lake Michigan. He loved the water, and had so much fun splashing and diving in the comfort of his father’s arms. I remember watching them with a tight throat. I couldn’t have been happier, on vacation with my husband and son. Al’s job was going well, and we could afford for me to stay at home with the baby, which was what I had always wanted. They were my world, and with the sun kissing their shoulders and their mirroring smiles filling my eyes with happy tears, I couldn’t imagine a luckier woman than I.

II.

The summer Lincoln was four years old I was pregnant with Michael. My second pregnancy was not nearly as easy as my first one had been, and my ‘morning’ sickness lasted all day, and well into my sixth month still had not receded. We went to Lake Michigan anyway, because it had become a tradition, but I ended up spending most of the week in the hotel, with Lincoln moaning and complaining of boredom because his father was too busy with work phone calls to actually take him swimming very much.

I tried to do it, but felt too ill; I ended up fighting with Al about leaving his work at work, at least while we were on vacation, but it was a familiar fight, one we’d been having on a more regular basis because his time was spent increasingly more and more at work than at home. With the difficult pregnancy and the stress of a rambunctious four year old, I had begun to feel like a single parent, and the vacation had held the illusion that that would end, at least for seven blissful days. The vacation did end, but with me crying and Aldo loading us into the car to go home early. Work, it seemed, just couldn’t wait.

III.

The summer Michael was five and Lincoln was almost 10, I watched them out the window as Lincoln led Michael to the ice cream truck. He had a dollar bill clutched in his hand, but I loved to see him explaining the choices to Michael, because I knew Michael would take this seriously, and not just pick something whimsically. He’d have to weigh the possible outcomes of his selection. Lincoln had the patience of 20 mothers, and he always let Michael hem and haw over things that ultimately held no consequence.

I couldn’t hear what was going on, so I opened the window wider, but that did nothing to carry the sound to me as there was no breeze to move the hot, humid air around, and when Michael didn’t make a decision speedily enough, they had to let other kids go in front of them.

Finally, a choice was made and Lincoln took his place in line to order for both of them. As they came back towards the house a few minutes later, Lincoln had a chocolate-shelled ice cream bar while Michael clutched a green-colored snow cone in both his hands. When my boys noticed me standing at the window, they both waved and smiled and lifted their bounty for me to see. It took so little to make them happy; but I knew it wouldn’t last.

IV.

The first summer Lincoln was imprisoned at Fox River, Michael went to see him exactly once. Lincoln didn’t know the significance of his visit, but his younger brother had just come from a week on Lake Michigan where he had spent an entire vacation, alone, reading books and sitting on the beach staring at the water.

When they saw each other, both were stoic, though Lincoln tried to be jovial and light-hearted. He talked about his impending appeals, and how his appellate defender thought they had a good chance of turning over the death sentence. Michael asked for the name of the public defender, and his office number, because he’d actually never known the name of the man who was attempting to keep Lincoln from being put to death.

Lincoln didn’t realize that his baby brother had sat on a beach remembering happy times, and a tradition that had ceased with my death. Lincoln didn’t know that Michael had decided, guilty or not, Lincoln was his brother, and Lincoln was the only person he had in his life who meant anything to him. Lincoln only knew the burst of happiness it was to see his brother again, to talk to him, to smile at him and to think of times outside of Fox River.

My boys, though devoted to each other to an enormous fault, often missed the biggest cues they gave to each other. Lincoln should have known after so much silence, that his brother the planner had come to only one conclusion, and that whatever he was about to do would change everything. Michael should have known, after what Lincoln had done to end up in Fox River, his plan was the last thing Lincoln would ever want him to do.

V.

The summer following their escape, they spent so much time running and hiding and fighting and escaping all over again, they didn’t even think about it being summer at all. They buried their father, and learned to live in a world greatly altered by one event. Of course, they had been prepared by my death years before, but they didn’t recognize the strength they had because of that first survival.

The next year, the summer of 2006, that was a great summer.

They didn’t go to Lake Michigan, because they’d had to leave Chicago and all its amenities behind, but they found a beach in Panama and they swam until their bodies were badly sun burnt, and Sara had to smooth aloe all over the inky torso of my youngest while my older boy employed the help of a woman whose only contact with him prior to that was the meeting of their heads in a forceful and bloody manner. His own son watched this event covertly from behind a comic book, a secret smile edging out from behind it.

It seemed to be the beginning of something truly wonderful.

When they chose to stay in Panama, I wondered if they realized it was because they desired perpetual summer. In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. 


End file.
